When you interact with non-player characters in a video game, what do you see them as? Do you see them as characters who have the potential for change and growth? Or do you see them as simple quest givers or even merely as set dressing? This answer might change depending on what game you’re playing, but the genre that I’ve noticed that tends to give players the strongest feelings toward NPCs are games with social elements; games such as Animal Crossing, The Sims, and Harvest Moon. This makes sense, as those games place a major emphasis on character interactions and treat their settings as living, breathing worlds in which certain events can happen without the player’s influence. However, one of these games in particular has caused some players to react to its setting and characters to a degree that I have not seen with any other video game. That game is Stardew Valley.
In Stardew Valley, the player assumes the role of a farmer who has inherited their grandfather’s land and moves to the valley in order to get a fresh start. At the start of the game, there are around thirty characters to meet in and around Pelican Town, with a few more being introduced as the game continues. Many of these characters are friendly towards the player right from the get-go. Some of them are more indifferent to the player, while a few are a bit wary or completely dismissive of them. I appreciate that not every character is equally enthused about the player moving into town. This gives the setting of Stardew Valley a sense of personality and intrigue right from the start that many similar games lack. However, for some players, their early impressions of the characters really stick with them.
In the lead-up to the release of Stardew Valley’s 1.6 Update, I was regularly checking the game’s subreddit for news or announcements regarding the update. One day, I came across this discussion post. This particular player expresses disdain for Abigail due to her very first line of dialogue in the game, going as far as to wonder why other players choose to marry her. This is just one example of how many people in the Stardew Valley community tend to take the game’s characters at face value, at least in my opinion. In the years since the game’s release, many of the characters have developed a reputation of sorts within the game’s fanbase. Some are almost universally beloved, while others receive almost nothing but hate. A few even have entire online communities dedicated to how disliked they are. While most video games have both likable and not so likable characters, I’ve rarely seen the disliked characters of a game get treated in the way that some of Stardew Valley’s NPCs are treated by fans. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, and people are free to discuss and interpret a game however they’d like to, but it does bother me that these interpretations tend to be based on very specific words or actions from a character and not the character as a whole. Some people in the Stardew community have had very extreme reactions to what characters say or do in certain scenes. Many times, a single act or line of dialogue from a character will be turned into a reason to relentlessly despise them. I’m sure some of these posts are made in a joking manner and aren’t meant to be taken completely seriously, but even the humorous ones still show how much contempt these players hold for certain characters. There are around four or five characters in Stardew Valley that bear the brunt of this hatred, but even generally well-liked NPCs can occasionally come under intense scrutiny.
One of the most polarizing characters in the game’s community is Clint, the blacksmith who lives and works on the edge of Pelican Town. Clint is socially awkward and tends to avoid most of the other NPCs. He has feelings for Emily, but struggles to build up enough courage to tell her. He doesn’t really like his job, but tries to be proud of the work he does anyway. All of these qualities (lacking social skills, not liking your job, and not knowing how to talk to the opposite sex) seem like they would be immensely relatable to a lot of people. If anything, I would expect many Stardew Valley players to be sympathetic towards Clint and see a bit of themselves in him. However, in much of the discourse about Clint online, his character traits are used to paint him in a very negative light. Some players misinterpret what he says and does and make him out to be a terrible person as a result, with even the most innocuous lines of dialogue from him being taken poorly by certain people. Some dedicated fans have even modded new dialogue into the game for Clint that supposedly makes him a “better” character. Other characters have received this treatment as well. I understand wishing a character to be more likable, but I think to go as far to change their dialogue is to entirely miss the point of that character.
As I said earlier, Stardew Valley is the only game that I know of with a fanbase that reacts this strongly to the game’s NPCs. This begs the question of why that is. Is it because of how the game is written? Does the game attract a certain audience that is more prone to scrutinizing its characters online? Are players making a lot of assumptions about the characters and interpreting them more negatively as a result? Does it have to do with the current climate of social media? I think that all of these could be reasons why the characters in this game are looked at in the way they are. Social interaction is a major part of Stardew Valley and for this reason, it greatly appeals to certain audiences. I don’t want to make assumptions, but I think that by its very nature, this game attracts both reserved players who want characters they can grow attached to as well as outgoing players who actively seek out personal drama and intrigue in the media they consume. Both of these types of players would naturally have strong emotional reactions to the game’s characters. I have also noticed that a lot of Stardew Valley fans online tend to have very imaginative interpretations or “headcanons” of the characters and the game’s world. Perhaps some people look at certain events or lines of dialogue in the game and take them even further than the game does, jumping to their own conclusions as a result. This might be reaching a bit, but I think that another contributing factor could also be the social climate that the game exists in. Stardew Valley was originally released in 2016, and it was around that time that social media became a significantly more polarizing environment. People online became much more defensive of their opinions and more judgemental of other people’s words and actions. This is usually said in reference to politics, but I think it applies to the media landscape as well, including video games. Everyone on the internet is much more opinionated now than they were ten years ago. This, combined with Stardew Valley’s focus on character relationships, has made the game’s characters easy targets for analysis and scrutiny.
Perhaps one of the biggest contributing factors to how Stardew Valley’s NPCs are viewed by players is the way in which the game is presented to the player. Character interactions happen in a nonlinear fashion, meaning that it is very easy to miss certain events or dialogue if the player is not actively seeking them out. This could lead to people missing out on certain sides of the characters' lives or personalities, which leads to them being mislabeled or misinterpreted. Some players immediately dismiss characters such as Haley or Shane, who start off as mean or abrasive to the player character and will remain that way unless the player decides to befriend them. It bums me out when this happens, since those people are missing out on some great character development and cutscenes by not making the effort to get to know these characters.
Fortunately, there are people in the Stardew community who recognize that many of the characters in the game are more nuanced than their reputation would have you believe. In general, I think that ConcernedApe did a great job making most of the NPCs feel realistic and relatable, which is why it’s such a shame to see that so many people disregard them after poor first impressions or judge them harshly based on a few specific lines of dialogue. There’s no wrong way to play Stardew Valley, and people can experience the game’s characters as much or as little as they want to, but I think that not getting to know the NPCs and discover all of the character depth lying beneath the surface of each one is to do the game a major disservice. Nearly every character in Stardew Valley is dealing with something that people contend with in real life all of the time. They struggle with grief, depression, alcoholism, loneliness, poverty, PTSD, being a single parent, having an unsupportive partner, running a small business, and so much more. I suppose that characters who act so much like real people are unfortunately looked at the same way as real people often are, being judged and criticized by others before anyone has gotten to truly know them. Next time you play Stardew Valley, I suggest that you make an effort to befriend some of the NPCs that you wouldn’t normally interact with. You might just end up seeing a whole new side of them.
AHedgeKnight. “People Hate NPCs Too Much.” Reddit Post. R/StardewValley, July 31, 2022. www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/wcuful/people_hate_npcs_too_much/.
“Clint Rewritten at Stardew Valley Nexus - Mods and Community.” Accessed March 15, 2024. https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/15830.
Diadem_Then. “Most of the Players Who Hate Clint Seem to Not Have Even Interacted with Him.” Reddit Post. R/StardewValley, June 20, 2022. www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/vgp0xm/most_of_the_players_who_hate_clint_seem_to_not/.
DragonGirl860. “WTF Demetrius.” Reddit Post. R/StardewValley, September 11, 2023. www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/16fl1gx/wtf_demetrius/.
Flashlight_Inspector. “Penny Is Honestly the Most Judgmental Marriage Candidate in the Game and It’s Wild I Never See This Brought Up.” Reddit Post. R/StardewValley, September 4, 2022. www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/x5z8d4/penny_is_honestly_the_most_judgmental_marriage/.
“IHateClint.” Accessed May 1, 2024. https://www.reddit.com/r/IHateClint/.
“IHatePierre.” Accessed May 1, 2024. https://www.reddit.com/r/IHatePierre/.
“Haley Is Nicer at Stardew Valley Nexus - Mods and Community.” Accessed March 15, 2024. https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/1256.
Marley9391. “I May Dislike Clint Even More than Pierre.” Reddit Post. R/StardewValley, March 9, 2023. www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/11n0zb5/i_may_dislike_clint_even_more_than_pierre/.
Stardew Valley Wiki. “Clint,” December 21, 2021. https://stardewvalley.fandom.com/wiki/Clint.
Stardew Valley Wiki. “Clint,” May 12, 2023. https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Clint.
“Tolerable Demetrius at Stardew Valley Nexus - Mods and Community.” Accessed March 15, 2024. https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/3892.
ellalovesferarriboys. “Surprised by How Many People Marry Abigail Considering This Is Her First Interaction with the Farmer.” Reddit Post. R/StardewValley, March 15, 2024. https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/1aoi6oi/surprised_by_how_many_people_marry_abigail/.
stardustnovas. “Take That Pierre.” Reddit Post. R/StardewValley, July 3, 2021. www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/ocrhqf/take_that_pierre/.